The Socket instance (server-side)

Besides:

• emitting and listening to events
• broadcasting events
• joining and leaving rooms

The Socket instance has a few attributes that may be of use in your application:

Socket#id

Each new connection is assigned a random 20-characters identifier.

This identifier is synced with the value on the client-side.

// server-side
io.on("connection", (socket) => {
  console.log(socket.id); // ojIckSD2jqNzOqIrAGzL
});

// client-side
socket.on("connect", () => {
  console.log(socket.id); // ojIckSD2jqNzOqIrAGzL
});

Upon creation, the Socket joins the room identified by its own id, which means you can use it for private messaging:

io.on("connection", socket => {
  socket.on("private message", (anotherSocketId, msg) => {
    socket.to(anotherSocketId).emit("private message", socket.id, msg);
  });
});

Note: you can’t overwrite this identifier, as it is used in several parts of the Socket.IO codebase.

Socket#handshake

This object contains some details about the handshake that happens at the beginning of the Socket.IO session.

{
  headers: /* the headers of the initial request */
  query: /* the query params of the initial request */
  auth: /* the authentication payload */
  time: /* the date of creation (as string) */
  issued: /* the date of creation (unix timestamp) */
  url: /* the request URL string */
  address: /* the ip of the client */
  xdomain: /* whether the connection is cross-domain */
  secure: /* whether the connection is secure */
}

Example:

{
  "headers": {
    "user-agent": "xxxx",
    "accept": "*/*",
    "host": "example.com",
    "connection": "close"
  },
  "query": {
    "EIO": "4",
    "transport": "polling",
    "t": "NNjNltH"
  },
  "auth": {
    "token": "123"
  },
  "time": "Sun Nov 22 2020 01:33:46 GMT+0100 (Central European Standard Time)",
  "issued": 1606005226969,
  "url": "/socket.io/?EIO=4&transport=polling&t=NNjNltH",
  "address": "::ffff:1.2.3.4",
  "xdomain": false,
  "secure": true
}

Socket#rooms

This is a reference to the rooms the Socket is currently in.

io.on("connection", (socket) => {
  console.log(socket.rooms); // Set { <socket.id> }
  socket.join("room1");
  console.log(socket.rooms); // Set { <socket.id>, "room1" }
});

Additional attributes

As long as you do not overwrite any existing attribute, you can attach any attribute to the Socket instance and use it later:

// in a middleware
io.use(async (socket, next) => {
  try {
    const user = await fetchUser(socket);
    socket.user = user;
  } catch (e) {
    next(new Error("unknown user"));
  }
});

io.on("connection", (socket) => {
  console.log(socket.user);

  // in a listener
  socket.on("set username", (username) => {
    socket.username = username;
  });
});

Events

On the server-side, the Socket instance emits two special events:

• disconnect
• disconnecting

disconnect

This event is fired by the Socket instance upon disconnection.

io.on("connection", (socket) => {
  socket.on("disconnect", (reason) => {
    // ...
  });
});

Here is the list of possible reasons:

disconnecting

This event is similar to disconnect but is fired a bit earlier, when the Socket#rooms set is not empty yet

io.on("connection", (socket) => {
  socket.on("disconnecting", (reason) => {
    for (const room of socket.rooms) {
      if (room !== socket.id) {
        socket.to(room).emit("user has left", socket.id);
      }
    }
  });
});

Note: those events, along with connect, connect_error, newListener and removeListener, are special events that shouldn’t be used in your application:

// BAD, will throw an error
socket.emit("disconnect");

Complete API

The complete API exposed by the Socket instance can be found here.